


Entraide

by Amazaria



Category: One Piece
Genre: Disaster spies cope with life-threatening situations with sarcasm: the fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, It's a collection of scenes and of sarcasm, No Plot/Plotless, Platonic Relationships, They're siblings and I love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 01:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19032025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amazaria/pseuds/Amazaria
Summary: "- If we both get captured because of your unwarranted worry, I'll dump everything I have on you and make sure you get as deep in Impel Down as you possibly can.""- Ivankov's in Impel Down, I'd be free in a minute," he points out. "Also, I feel like you bleeding out is a perfectly reasonable reason to worry."She doesn't answer, which is reason enough for him to kneel by her side and wish for bandages."- Don't tear a piece of your clothes if you're going to complain about it later," mutters Koala."- Right, I'll just watch you bleed to death then," he retorts, and tries to fabricate an acceptable bandage out of what he has. It doesn't turn out that great; Sabo's good at improvising, but not that good.She scowls at him when he tries to look at the wound on her shoulder, and he rolls his eyes."- I'm saving your life, you could be more grateful."(or: in which Sabo and Koala survive, make bad decisions, and yell at each other for making bad decisions, all at once.)





	Entraide

  _"Is time written in a stone?_

_Every life was lived long ago,_

_Or does it change with every single step,_

_Every single word, every single breath?_

_I've been trying make sense of it all, of it all._

_'Cause if we met in another way, on another day,_

_Would it all turn out the same?_

_Would it all turn out the same?"_

 

Michl, Borrowed Time [(x)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0kzTACJ3Do)

 

* * *

 

 

Koala decides that she trusts Sabo with her life and more the second time they're on a mission together.

They've been assigned to a discreet merchant in a small but pretty town. The woman doesn't seem to notice them as they trail her for several days, posing as a couple, business assistants, half-siblings, and numerous other cover stories that are not one bit true.

Her current partner lies with more ease than she thought he would, given his appearance of a proper and polite young man. He invents stories at the start of each day, simple ones; she follows his lead at the start then elaborates, invents anecdotes that haven't happened and jokes that she doesn't find funny. 

They work well together, switching personalities easily and fighting without bothering each other, which is the best she could expect from someone she's fought with a grand total of four times.

All in all, it's going pretty well, thinks Koala, and then, has it often seems to do, the world decides to prove her wrong.

Sabo walks to her, lesswalking and more running _,_ actually; she's on her guard instantly, because in a week with the man, that's the most distressed she has ever seen him, and they were fighting for their life yesterday morning.

"- Celestial Dragons," he breathes as he grabs her wrist, and it takes all her strength not to freeze in pure terror, her thoughts a jumbled mess of  _what why no how no no no_.

(They can't know she's here. She changed so much- they can't-

Please, they can't.)

Sabo doesn't seem to notice her fear, and instead, he drags her to the inside of a building. He's probably not completely blind to her nervousness, though, because the second they're out of people's view he lets go of her wrist and take a step back to give her breathing room.

"- You okay?" He mutters, and Koala looks at him, at this boy she doesn't know, that definitely shouldn't know her past because Koala barely trusts him, because he lies too easily, smiles too often (and she can never tell if it's genuine but her instinct screams that it's  _not_ )-

"- I can't go back to them," she whispers, her voice a fragile thing, and Sabo seems disconcerted for a minute before darkening. He tenses, loses the polite attitude he kept like a mask until now, and he clenches his fists.

There's a moment of silence, and Koala almost says something, but then-

"- I hate them and I don't even know why- I don't remember. Anything," Sabo replies, a confession for a confession, just as vague and precise as hers and just as vulnerable.

( _Foolish_ , says the part of Koala that grew up in a world of gold and bloodstains.  _Hide everything that might allow someone to get close._

_A secret for a secret doesn't mean anything,_ says the spy, the one who deals in whispers and meaningless rumors.  _You're not sure it has any value to him._ )

She doesn't say anything, just stares at him, and he takes a quick look around before taking a step forward, still keeping a very reasonable distance between them.

"- Are you going to be alright?"

_Absolutely not,_ she thinks.

"- I'll be fine," and the words sound fake even to her own ears, or maybe only to her ears, because Sabo nods once, decisively, not questioning her statement for a second.

"- Slip away if you need to, I'll keep up with the surveillance," he assures her, professional and focused and still breathing a little too fast for him to be as unaffected by the sudden development as he pretends to be.

(If it's anger or fear tainting his behavior, she can't tell.)

He waits until she nods before stepping back and turning his back to her; when he turns around, any lingering tension is gone, so fast Koala would think she imagined it if she wasn't so used to keeping an eye on ephemeral things, hard to catch and accept as reality.

_He doesn't lie all the time,_ Koala thinks through her uneasiness, sorting through her feelings and smoothing out the prickly bits before stepping back out with her partner.  _Or maybe he does, but he was honest with me._

And that's ridiculously little, but she's worried and there are Celestial Dragons and she has to rely on  _someone_ , so she says  _fine_  to herself _,_ and stops surveilling him just as much as their target.

( _He_  doesn't stop surveilling her, but she figures she can't do anything about that.)

 

oOo

 

Sabo does not  _decide_  to trust Koala as much as he stops one day and realizes that he  _does_.

Given that they're in the process of drowning, he can't panic as much as he would have liked.

"- Sabo!" yells Koala through the rain, sounding worried, and how did they manage to get dropped in the middle of the ocean right during a tempest, seriously? "Sabo,  _wave_ , hold your breath!"

He does, automatically, because he  _trusts her_ , and, oh, Seas, he's so fucked.

And then he's under the water, losing any notion of where is up, drowning but not quite, and a very distant part of him panics because of something he doesn't remember.

Koala grabs his hand through the waves and yanks him towards her; he clutches onto the rock she apparently managed to find with all his might, even though his nails are broken and his fingers bleeding.

"- We have to get out of here," he manages to get out.

The roar of the ocean almost covers his voice, but Koala nods. Normally she'd make a clever comment, Sabo knows, but the waves are trying very hard to crush her body against the rock she helped him climb on, so she's otherwise preoccupied.

Sabo hauls her up next to him; she collapses against the slippery stones and holds on as best she can.

"- We're too far away from land to have even a sliver of chance of reaching the ground, and we're too close to land for a ship to risk getting close to us," says Sabo, forcing his voice to be devoid of the despair and overwhelming exhaustion that's starting to hit him.

"- Pretty much," agrees Koala, still trying to catch her breath.

"- What do we do?"

"- I," announces Koala as she gets up, "am going to fight the ocean."

This is the moment where Sabo usually sighs and asks her to explain, or dissuades her, but he's tired and cold.

"- Sure," he just says. "Why wouldn't you? I'd fight the ocean, too, but I think I broke my wrist."

He looks down to verify his claim, but he was wrong. His wrist isn't broken; probably just sprained, but that doesn't explain the sharp pain he feels.

Then again, the large gash in his forearm might be a good explanation. It's a recent wound, sustained yesterday; recent enough for it not to have become a scar just yet, recent enough for the salt in the water to  _hurt_.

(Vaguely, Sabo knows that he should be able to differentiate the pain of a broken wrist from that, but he's very tired.)

"- I'm not going to fight the ocean just for fun, idiot," tuts Koala disapprovingly, like she's a reasonable person who wouldn't fight the ocean just for fun. "The land is behind us and the waves are only coming one way, so if I punch them before they crash over us, we should be fine until the storm passes."

At that point, Sabo's tired brain just has to protest, even if he's hurting and tired and annoyed.

Mostly annoyed. Being dumped into the ocean will do that to you, it seems.

"- Koala, you can't just-" He interrupts himself to cough up water, and his partner's eyes narrow. "You can't just punch waves for what may be  _hours._ "

"- It's either that or we drown."

Sabo would protest, but she's right.

"- Let me help, at least."

"- Unless you learned Fishman karate when I wasn't looking, it'll be a little hard."

"-  _Koala._ "

"-  _Sabo."_

He groans, a noise that she either doesn't hear or elects to ignore.

"- Don't fall asleep," she says to him, and yeah, maybe he's very close to hypothermia, but she doesn't have to remind hi-

Or maybe she does, because his eyes were closing.

"- Keep talking, then."

"- You're such high maintenance, Sabo."

"- I'm worth it. Now punch the water before it kills us."

She does.

(The water doesn't kill them. Sabo tries to learn Fishman karate for a few days, then promptly gives up.

_You'll be with me anyway_ , he says to Koala when she mocks him, and she smiles and nods and he releases a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.)

 

oOo

 

They stick together. It works, most of the time.

 

oOo

 

"- Will you please not die," says Sabo to Koala one day, when the ground beneath him is turning crimson and his vision is getting blurry.

"- I'm trying my best, asshole," snaps Koala, leaning against the wood wall and breathing in short pants, her eyes closed and looking two seconds away from collapsing."What sort of sadist laces his bullets with _poison_  anyway?" 

Sabo almost points out that their target was a slave dealer and as such one of the worst type of people to have ever existed, but chooses not to. Mentioning slavery while his partner is bleeding out in an unfamiliar and decidedly-unsafe location probably isn't the best idea.

"- Well, maybe if you hadn't managed to get shot three times you'd be healthier."

He turns his back to her to check for any danger or enemy arriving. His first instinct would be bandaging her wounds to stop the bleeding, but that would be useless if they die because they got caught by surprise.

"- Oh, sure, it's  _my_ fault I got shot. You got hurt too, mind you."

Sabo grimaces. He would have liked for her to not have noticed, but Koala isn't his partner for nothing; she's capable and perceptive, and he's learned a long time ago that lying to her about his health isn't the best idea.

"- I'm fine," he says still, and the fact that she doesn't even scoff makes him frown. "Hey, are you okay?"

"- I've been shot three times, never been better."

"- Yeah, well- stay awake, alright?"

"- I will. Is it a paralytic, you think?"

Her voice is shaking, weak; Sabo tries desperately not to think about it too much.

"- If it is, it's slow-acting. And anyway, you've been hit three times, you would know its effects better than me."

"- At the moment the only effect I'm noticing is that it hurts  _a lot._ "

"- Yeah, noticed that too."

He hears her hissing through her teeth and decides that being careful won't be useful for much longer if he's alone with a corpse in enemy territory.

"- Okay, hold still," he warns, walking towards her, and she sends him a  _look_  when she sees him abandoning his position.

"- If we both get captured because of your unwarranted worry, I'll dump everything I have on you and make sure you get as deep in Impel Down as you possibly can."

"- Ivankov's in Impel Down, I'd be free in a minute," he points out. "Also, I feel like you bleeding out is a perfectly reasonable reason to worry."

She doesn't answer, which is reason enough for him to kneel by her side and wish for bandages.

"- Don't tear a piece of your clothes if you're going to complain about it later," mutters Koala.

"- Right, I'll just watch you bleed to death then," he retorts, and tries to fabricate an acceptable bandage out of what he has. It doesn't turn out that great; Sabo's good at improvising, but not that good.

She scowls at him when he tries to look at the wound on her shoulder, and he rolls his eyes.

"- I'm saving your life, you could be more grateful."

"- I've saved your life ten times in the last hour, we're even. Besides, there's no point in saving it now if we get discovered in the next minute."

"- Koala, I'm not leaving you here to get to safety."

(It's the problem with having been partners for such a long time; they know each other too well, and Koala knows he's not going to leave her, but she's going to try and convince him to do it anyway.)

She tries to fake a grin.

"- Well, I expect you'd come back for me."

"- If you don't get to an actual doctor in twenty minutes, you'll be unconscious or worse."

"- You're hurt too, and we still don't know what was that poison," she points out, as if he cares about his own health when his hands are red with her blood.

"- Koala, I'm  _not leaving you._ "

She sighs then, and settles. 

"- It's no use we both die, you know."

Her voice is getting weaker; he tries to go faster.

"- You're not going to die, you asshole, stop saying that."

"- If I do, kick a Celestial Dragon in the face for me."

He holds back a hysterical laugh, wills himself not to panic and lose any usefulness he still has.

"- Will do. I'm finished with bandages, can you walk?"

"- I can try."

She attempts to pull herself up, and gets so pale Sabo's thinks she's about to pass out.

"- Yeah, okay, no, on second thought we're not doing that. I'm carrying you."

"-You have a bullet wound on your leg," she says.

"- And you have one on your shoulder, one on your arm, and one on your side. I'm better off than you are."

"- I'm going to slow you down."

"- Are you done listing irrelevant facts?"

"- They're not _irrelevant_ \- Sabo-"

"- Koala, I'm  _not leaving you here_ , what don't you understand?"

She sighs.

"- Fine, but if we both die it's on your conscience."

"- Sure, if it makes you feel better. Do try not to bleed on my shirt."

"-Why are you even wearing white, are you stupid?"

"- Overly optimistic."

(He must be stupid, to get so attached to people so easily, when it's so easy for them to die.

That's no one's business but his own, though.)

 

oOo

 

"- Hey, Koala," says Sabo when he kicks her door open in the middle of the night, an action that might or might not end his life prematurely depending on how paranoid his partner is feeling today. "Guess who got punched in the face today?"

He hears her groan from her bed, and no knife coming his way, which means she must have been asleep for once. 

"- I don't know who got punched, but I know who _will_  get punched if he woke me up in the middle of the night for no reason," she threatens.

"- I did. I got punched in the face. I might have a concussion," states Sabo bluntly, and he hears her swear and scramble upright. "No, no, don't get up, I just need you to help me stay awake."

"- How did you even get a concussion? We've been stuck in Baltigo for the past week!"

"- Training accident, and by that, I mean someone brought down the roof of a training room on my head accidentally while I was passing through it searching for Hack."

"- That's not getting punched in the face, that's  _a roof falling on you_! And- how did you not notice that with Haki?" she asks as she sits back down on her bed. 

"- I've been awake for 52 hours."

She sighs.

"- Of course. Why did I ever agree to be your partner? You have no instinct of self-preservation. How has your body not shut down yet?"

Sabo doesn't answer, and instead sits down at her desk and reaches for a pen, turning the light on.

"- Sabo, if you're planning to do my paperwork while you have a concussion, I'll have to murder you."

"- I'm trying to do you a favor!"

"- I'm not even sure you know how to write, right now."

There's a moment of silence, and then Sabo sets the pen back down.

"- Knew it. How bad is it, for you to have to stay awake? And how come you're not just at the infirmary?"

"- I was. They're not nearly as charming as you, so I came here. Thought you'd be awake; if I knew you were sleeping, I'd have let you alone."

Koala frowns. There's an odd note to Sabo's voice right now; he sounds sincerely apologetic, and weirdly small.

"- Hey, are you okay?"

Sabo curls up in his chair, goggles clutched in his hands; he nods once, a jerky movement.

"- I could go to sleep, but- I'd rather not."

Koala counts to three, assures herself that he must have a reason for coming to her despite not having any medical emergency, and does not strangle him.

"- Why?"

He shifts in his seat; meets her eyes through the dim light. That's something that Sabo always does, when he's talking to someone he trusts; maybe it's just his way of showing he's telling the truth, because he's such a great liar that otherwise they wouldn't know. 

She holds his gaze and tries not to think too much of how many people Sabo never looks in the eyes.

It's not like she trusts many people, either; who is she to judge him?

(She tries not to think about how terrifying it is to be one of the few he trusts. It's always easier to let people down when they trust you.)

"- I- memories tend to surface, when I've been concussed," he says, and Koala hates the fact that he's had enough experience with these to know their effects on him. "They're not- the ones I'd like to remember."

He drags his hand across his scar, in a nervous gesture she's not sure he's aware of.

Koala's not sure if Sabo wants to remember anything; the only information he has on his childhood is the feeling of dread he was left with after forgetting, and the fact that he was badly burned when Dragon took him in. People say that it can't be that bad, but Koala has plenty of experience with horrible childhood; if she could forget all of hers, it's not guaranteed she wouldn't. The bad largely outweighs the good, after all.

She would prefer for Sabo to stay unaware, if it could spare him some pain.

She realizes that she hasn't answered Sabo's kind-of-confession, and shakes her head decisively.

"- Right," she whispers back. "What do you want to do, then?"

"-Stay away from fire and spiked gloves," he answers with a wry sort of smile, and sends her a lost look that seems extremely out of place on him.

"- Okay, alright, we can do that. How do you feel about coffee and me actually doing my own paperwork for once?"

The grateful look he sends her speaks for him.

(The next morning, they're both completely exhausted, and her paperwork is 100% unreadable and will definitely have to be redone.

Neither of them can bring themselves to care.)

 

oOo

 

"- Why are you  _here,_ " hisses Sabo at Koala.

"- Because this guy is  _the worst._ "

"- He's a corrupt hitman, Koala, I thought that was a given."

"- No- I mean,  _yes_ , he is, but that's not what I meant. I can't find the information we wanted, which means he's  _smarter_ than we thought."

Sabo tenses, and dearly wishes he had his pipe at ready. Even if this was supposed to be a quiet mission, with few risks- he should have known better.

(They're Dragon's  _best team_. Sabo's the Chief _of Staff_. The missions they're given are never simple _,_ never predictable, never _safe._

Sabo doesn't hold it against Dragon. Where he and Koala might get hurt, others will get killed. He'd rather be wounded than attend another hastily-planned funeral.)

"- Right," he says. "We're in trouble, then."

"- To stay polite," confirms Koala.

"- Do you think he knows we're here?"

"- Most definitely. Things were going too well, I should have known that was weird. Things  _never_ go well."

"- Now that's a lie," retorts Sabo like their lives aren't a complete nightmare. "You're focusing on the bad, is all!"

Sabo's fake cheer when things go bad might be his most annoying coping mechanism, thinks Koala, just before a blade impales itself on the wall, just behind the space her head was a second ago.

"- A  _knife?_ " Exclaims Sabo just before ducking to avoid another. "What, are they on a budget? Don't they have bullets?"

"- Stop taunting them," manages to say Koala. "Or giving them advice, I don't know which one it is."

"- I wouldn't do that," retorts Sabo, managing to sound  _offended,_ which if anything is just another proof that he's a great liar.

He smiles at her charmingly, which lost all its effect about three months into their partnership, which he  _knows._

(There's a 90% he's still doing it just to annoy her.)

At this point, the knives have become more than an annoying distraction and are coming fast enough that Sabo stopped making comments; she decides to take that as her cue to run.

They're in a corridor, in a building that used to be a city hall and as such has a lot of empty offices she can duck in. She opens a door, checks that the mysterious knives-thrower(s) isn't/aren't in there, and enters. 

The door slams shut behind her.

"- Rude," she hears Sabo complain, but she cuts him off before he can go on.

"- Don't enter."

"- What? Why?"

_Thang,_ she hears, and listens as the blade of yet another knife redecorates the walls of the hallway.

"- I'm stuck. The door's locked."

"- Can't you pick it?"

"- Yeah, but there's gas."

_Well, fuck,_ thinks Sabo, and also  _oh no oh no oh please no._

"- What kind of gas? We're-all-going-to-die-gas or just-hold-your-breath-and-you'll-be-fine-gas?"

"- How am I supposed to know?"

A silence, as Sabo ducks under yet another knife and deflects another- they're coming increasingly faster, and he's getting tired.

"- Koala, you need to get out of here."

There's no sarcastic answer, and it should probably worry Sabo that that's his most reliable way of telling she's in trouble, but communication was never their best skill anyway.

"- Hmm," he hears her say, and then: "I'm going to punch through the wall!"

"- Of course you are,"he mutters. "There's already knives flying through the hallway, we don't need pieces of the wall too! You're sure you can't pick the lock?"

"- The gas is filling up the room a little too fast, I'd rather not."

"- We're never getting those papers, are we?"

"- Oh yeah, Dragon's going to kill us _,"_ she says cheerfully, and then, as announced, she punches through the wall.

Predictably, because this is the wall of a deserted hallway in a city hall, and because Koala has been punching things since she was 10, it explodes. Sabo winces as the debris flies towards him, and reflexively covers his head and shuts his eyes.

"- We're running, right?" Calls Koala, and he coughs up dust and nods frantically. "Then  _run,_ idiot!"

He follows after her, through stairs and hallways, and when the knives have finally stopped coming, they pause to catch their breath.

"- Okay, don't panic," announces Koala, and then holds out her hand to him.

Her hand, which is a mess of black veins and blue flesh _._

"- That's not healthy," Sabo hears himself say, and his partner scowls.

"- No, really? Wouldn't have guessed."

The panic kicks in.

"- Koala, your hand is  _blue,_ what the  _fuck,_ how did that happen?"

"- I definitely didn't get out of that room soon enough."

"- Right, right, right, the gas. Well, what do we do?"

"- Help me apply a tourniquet above my wrist so I don't lose feeling in my entire arm instead of just my hand."

_Oh, that's such a bad idea,_ thinks Sabo, and starts helping her do exactly that.

"- D'you think the knife-thrower will leave us alone now that we've stopped trying to steal his secrets?" Asks Koala, shutting her eyes while Sabo shuts her arm's blood circulation down.

"- Definitely not. We should get out of here as fast as possible, especially considering you're going to lose your hand if you stay like that too long."

"- I  _know,_ " she groans. "I could probably convince Dragon to bribe someone to make me a new hand. It's the Grand Line, it can't be too hard to get me a new hand."

"- You won't need a new hand if you just move," points out Sabo, and to his mind, that's a great point, but Koala just groans again. "Oh, come on, at least neither of us are bleeding out."

"- I'm poisoned, I deserve sympathy."

"- Which you will have once we're not in a decidedly-unsafe territory, now  _move._ "

"- You're the  _worst,_ " says Koala, and lets Sabo drags her along and back to their temporary headquarters.

 

oOo

 

"- Koala, am I burning alive?" asks Sabo out of the blue during one of their meeting.

"-  _What?_ No, you're not  _burning alive-_ what even- Sabo, are you okay?"

"- I think I have a fever," he says. 

And then he passes out.

She catches him before he can hit the floor, and shakes him awake; he opens his eyes, which is such a relief that Koala feels like she might cry.

"- Don't do that, you absolute- you complete- why do you think you're burning alive?"

"- Well," he says, his words perfectly clear and understandable despite the fact that his forehead is burning under Koala's hand. "That's the first thing I remember."

(Koala is going to kill the entirety of Goa kingdom's government.)

"- Okay. Alright, okay, we're- you have to go to the infirmary, why didn't I notice earlier, why didn't you tell me, what the  _hell,_  Sabo-"

"- Sorry," mutters Sabo. "You were busy. I didn't think it'd get that bad."

"- I'm surprised you're still conscious," she says, as she helps him get up.

"- Yeah, me too."

"- Do you think one of your wounds got infected?"

"- Maybe. I don't know."

He looks- well, he looks awful. The grasp he has on her sleeve is trembling, his eyes trying and failing to focus on her.

"- I could just get a medic. I should call for one, you're in no state to walk."

"- I'm fine."

"- If I let go right now, I'm not sure you'll stay upright."

"- You have so little faith in me."

And Koala should call a medic, she really should, but Sabo's hand is grasping her sleeve with all the strength he has and she doesn't think she can bear to make him let go.

So they walk.

They eventually manage to get the infirmary, a place that Koala has come to know particularly well over the years because her partner tends to be the worst idiot the world has ever seen. It's a big room, filled with beds that are less likely to be empty than she'd like. 

By the time they get there, Sabo's breathing is the farthest thing from regular, and he's visibly fighting to stay awake. His words, though, are still perfectly clear and annoyingly complicated, if said a little weakly, which makes no sense.

"- There," she announces. She helps him sit down on a bed, calls for a nurse to get there. When she goes to let go of him, she notices something on the side of her shirt, and-

"-  _Sabo you're bleeding."_

"- Am I?" He asks, and when she goes to snarl at him he holds his hands up in a placating gesture, revealing the rather large bloodstain on his side. "No, that's a genuine question, I can't tell."

"- You absolute- how can you not notice that?"

He shrugs.

"- I'm on a lot of painkillers."

"- Sure, 'cause that's a valid reason for you failing to notice that one of your wounds has reopened."

She sighs, sits by his side then gets up again, restless. The bloodstain on Sabo's white shirt (the reason why any of them still wear white is a mystery, honestly) isn't growing any larger, so she figures it's mostly fine, and he's not in any danger of bleeding out immediately.

(It does little to reassure her.)

"- You're such a disaster. You'd die without me by your side."

"- I would," says Sabo quietly, solemn and full of certainty, and maybe it's the fever talking or maybe it's him losing his filters and speaking his deepest thoughts.

Koala suddenly can't stand the possibility of discovering all that Sabo thinks, all those painful secrets he keeps to himself like she does with hers. She stands up, goes to leave him, because he's in the infirmary now, what can she do that they can't?

(Wounds she knows how to take care of; slaves had a lot of them.

Illness, though? Much more complicated, much more fatal. _Better to get away_ , whispers her instinct, and she almost does, but-)

"- You're leaving," Sabo says, with so little emotion in his voice he might as well be screaming in distress.

She can't bear to hear it.

"- I'm not," she answers swiftly, praying that he won't be able to call her out on her lie because of his fever. "I'm getting you a glass of water, in fact. You could be a little more grateful."

"- Oh," he mutters, and is then so silent she fears he might have passed out again.

She gets him a glass of water, and goes to sit by his side again.

"- You can leave, you know," he protests. "I'm fine."

"- You're stuck with me for the next four hours," she says like she hasn't heard him. "In four hours I have a meeting with Karasu, but hopefully by then you'll be sleeping off your fever."

"- Hopefully," he echoes. "Thanks."

"- Drink your water, idiot."

 

oOo

 

_(I would die a thousand times over if that meant you could live_ , neither of them say.  _I would set aflame everything I ever loved, I would ruin everything holy in the world._

_I would gather all that is precious and kind and comforting, and I would let it sink at the bottom of the deepest ocean,_ neither of them acknowledge.  _I would let people burn and I would burn myself._

Instead, Koala leaves him coffee during rough days and he fills out her paperwork when he can't sleep.

It conveys roughly the same message.)

**Author's Note:**

> Dragon's best team: unreasonable, sarcastic, will burn the world down for each other. The World Government should fear them, truly
> 
> (The title is in French and means "mutual aid", but it's prettier and shorter in French, and I'm French so I used the French word)


End file.
